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Sigh.

If only it were MORE singleplayer. I played SWTOR because of my love of KOTOR. I would kill for this MMO to let me take multiple companions with me to do group instances. Instead, it follows the same tired cliche of "Sure, you can solo to the end, then it's group up or give up."

If only one (ONE!) decent MMO would make group play truly optional. However, virtually every single one of them locks away all the best gear behind group only content.

One day soon some bright, innovative developers will find a way to make an MMO with a real group/solo option, instead of the forced grouping endgame that they all share. And those developers will reap mucho dollars for such a design.

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I tend to refer to SWTOR as a single player game with multiplayer options / co-op, but get lazy sometimes and just say single player game

Red Dead Redemption is not a MMO but you can play with many other people or play the game by yourself offline. I feel this is more of a MMO than SWTOR is, due to its vast lands, and you can hunt down creatures and harvest them, and then you can go online and play with loads of other people.

I started off playing SWTOR with a friend who I played most of other MMOs with, SWG, City of Heroes, Warhammer, Vanguard, Star Trek Online Champions Online etc

The thing that makes this more of a single player feel than other MMOs were the cutscenes. For split seconds, especially in class quests, I forgot I am playing with my friend, as the game shuts you out of the other players characters. I guess it is just that cutscenes in MMOs are new, and used to them in single player games. I never feel like this in other MMOs, I feel like part of the world playing with myt friend at ALL times, and other players around.

The other thing I notice with the custsenes is that whilst your in a cutsene you or zombified with a speech bubble over your head, as you take time out of what is actually going on around you to enjoy the story. If you go speak to a NPC with a quest, and they are sitting down, during the cut scene they stand up, then when it finishes they sit back down again, to resume the position of the main world that everybody sees, but whilst you are in that cutsene your and your group only see the NPC standing, everyone else still sees the NPC sitting, while you stand there like glued into the matrx! This to me loses the MM part of MMORPG.

I was at WOWs launch, but there was way more people running around questing, than there were in SWTOR, and apparently SWTOR had more players than WOW at launch. Also in other MMOs the worlds are not so heavily instanced, cutting down players further, which may be the reason

They do not seem to be adding much, and doing many events, like other MMOs, which keep the world vibrant and active / changing. Even now with announcement of Free 2 Play, there is not a lot of content coming, only stuff that they have been promising to be coming all year. All which is less than stuff you can get in one DLC on single player games (eg a Rockstar game DLCbut they have recently announced it has been too big and cutting down the size of future DLC and the price too). The store will probably just get playrrs to pay for the existing content, and get weapons, vehicles, clothes, pets, companions, tp save grinding in game credits for, or buy the speeder skill instead at level 5 instead of level up 20 and get it for free.

As for the space combat side, that is single player through and through, no multiplayer at all

SWTOR is no MMO, it is a single player game with multiplayer options with (rip off IMO) additional costs.

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I can see the points for saying it's a single player RPG, but.. After playing Funcom's Secret World, whew! Secret World is a true single player RPG. Forcing groups to split up to do single player instances, effing up cutscenes because you're grouped. At least SWTOR let you run missions and instances together.

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World of warcrarft was very soloable, even the elite boss's didn't take a group.

No MMO forces you to solo the whole levels, you can group with friends and guild members. With the introduction of WoW, that changed the whole system of grouping as they brought in Quests and made the game easy to play by yourself. You only needed a group was for the dungeons but otherwise nothing prevented you from making it to max level even Elite monsters were simple.

Star Wars followed the same path as WoW, 90% of the game reminded me of World of Warcraft to it's UI, Quests, soloability, Poor PvP layout, what really put Star Wars to the solo path was the Companion. The companion fit what the player was lacking, if they needed a tank they could have one, if they needed a healer *bam* they could have one.

Now I started MMO's with Meridian 59 and Ultima Online. Ultima Online was designed to be able to solo almost any monster except for the truly epic ones that did require people. You just had to avoid the PvPr's at times, or face them, there was no global chat either so that made the game on screen chatting truely the best.

Everquest will be in my eyes the best game setup practically forcing you to group to get anywhere in the game. With it's long XP needed to level and the hard hitting monsters, you could solo with the right class it could just take you awhile as you kited them around and hope not to run into another mob. With the monsters and xp you would want to group and this brought in social aspect that is really missing from the current generation of MMO's.

I don't mean general chat either, that is not a social talking area; that has been a chest beating, yelling match of people spouting nonsense and acting like they know what they're talking about.

Dark Age of Camelot I believe was the last game to offer true grouping as there were monsters you could solo to max, but also some places that another member was worth it to have along side you.

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Originally posted by Zabat1

I can see the points for saying it's a single player RPG, but.. After playing Funcom's Secret World, whew! Secret World is a true single player RPG. Forcing groups to split up to do single player instances, effing up cutscenes because you're grouped. At least SWTOR let you run missions and instances together.

Not quite accurate for either game. While it's true there are single player instances in TSW, (they are few and far between btw) it also lets you complete some missions by assisting other players in the kills without even formally grouping with them. It has the standard group oriented dungeons as well.

SWTOR has its own version of the single player instance, there are a number of missions (few and far between I'll grant you) where only one player of a particular class may get credit for completing the mission. True, they don't force you to break up your group, but you still have rerun it a couple of times if there are other players of the same class.

But no doubt, both titles are cut from the same cloth and feel very much like single player experiences due to the heavy use of cut scenes (where you can stand idle for quite a bit of time listening to all the NPC's stories and what not) and this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does detract from a more traditional MMORPG experience where the players are more central to creating the actual story instead of reading about it.

Arrogant, Condescending, Dismissive, Elitist, "Meany", you speak as if these are bad things?Still currently "subscribed" to EVE, and only EVE!!!"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon

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As another said, it's not whether the game supports grouping, but how it does so. Eg. How effectively. Like most things SWTOR, it does them poorly. We now have a group finder, but for most group content it doesn't facilitate grouping for quests and heroic quests. For all grouping, it doesn't upon conclusion put you back where you were when you exit the area, back to the planet you were in the location you were, as LOTRO does very well. Etc. etc.

As an MMO, TOR suffers endlessly and needlessly from design sacred cows that seriously impair game satisfaction and make it seem more the single player RPG.

Cases in point: Surname features are horribly restricted, taking players optionality away from family accounts, sibling accounts that would share names, or conversely forcing shared surnames among avatars that it should not force. I give a long list of surname situational failures in my TOR site Definitive Issues thread, search it.

Another case is GTN where their sacred cows forced us to twiddle our thumbs and stare at each other on stations as forced social and group hubs, and removed GTN's and other utilities from the planets, thereby restricting our opportunity and desire to engage in trade and other features as now too much trouble and too inconvenient... Another, like bothering to find a group for heroics without a group finder that spans planets, if it even addressed heroics at all.

Lame and broken. Our household went from 4 accounts to 1. That's the trend in subscriptions, I'm afraid. They need to address the definitive issues, and put aside the sacred cows and arrogance, and subscribe to more MMO fundamentals providing more flexibility, optionality for the myriad of an MMO's players diverse preferences.

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I tend to refer to SWTOR as a single player game with multiplayer options / co-op, but get lazy sometimes and just say single player game

Red Dead Redemption is not a MMO but you can play with many other people or play the game by yourself offline. I feel this is more of a MMO than SWTOR is, due to its vast lands, and you can hunt down creatures and harvest them, and then you can go online and play with loads of other people.

I started off playing SWTOR with a friend who I played most of other MMOs with, SWG, City of Heroes, Warhammer, Vanguard, Star Trek Online Champions Online etc

The thing that makes this more of a single player feel than other MMOs were the cutscenes. For split seconds, especially in class quests, I forgot I am playing with my friend, as the game shuts you out of the other players characters. I guess it is just that cutscenes in MMOs are new, and used to them in single player games. I never feel like this in other MMOs, I feel like part of the world playing with myt friend at ALL times, and other players around.

The other thing I notice with the custsenes is that whilst your in a cutsene you or zombified with a speech bubble over your head, as you take time out of what is actually going on around you to enjoy the story. If you go speak to a NPC with a quest, and they are sitting down, during the cut scene they stand up, then when it finishes they sit back down again, to resume the position of the main world that everybody sees, but whilst you are in that cutsene your and your group only see the NPC standing, everyone else still sees the NPC sitting, while you stand there like glued into the matrx! This to me loses the MM part of MMORPG.

I was at WOWs launch, but there was way more people running around questing, than there were in SWTOR, and apparently SWTOR had more players than WOW at launch. Also in other MMOs the worlds are not so heavily instanced, cutting down players further, which may be the reason

They do not seem to be adding much, and doing many events, like other MMOs, which keep the world vibrant and active / changing. Even now with announcement of Free 2 Play, there is not a lot of content coming, only stuff that they have been promising to be coming all year. All which is less than stuff you can get in one DLC on single player games (eg a Rockstar game DLCbut they have recently announced it has been too big and cutting down the size of future DLC and the price too). The store will probably just get playrrs to pay for the existing content, and get weapons, vehicles, clothes, pets, companions, tp save grinding in game credits for, or buy the speeder skill instead at level 5 instead of level up 20 and get it for free.

As for the space combat side, that is single player through and through, no multiplayer at all

SWTOR is no MMO, it is a single player game with multiplayer options with (rip off IMO) additional costs.

-Cutscenes are interactive for the whole group, not just one person.

-The character's aren't zombified. They are rolling to for a chance to interact with the NPC as part of the story.

-Many MMOs, including The Secret World and GW2, have the player interact with the NPC. During the custcene other players will just see your character standing there in front of an NPC with a "busy signal" over your head. This aint new.

-Events? SWTOR has had a couple events. Have most MMOs had more? DDO? STO? Chamions Online? Tera? Age of Conan? Maybe I'm missing something.

-Space combat is a solo activity, just like buying pets from the cash shop is a solo activity in other MMOs. You can still take some of the rewards from space combat and bring them with your character to the rest of the game. The space combat isn't even a big part of the game. It's seriously a mini-game lol. Come on now... You could replace it with "Surfing the Cash Shop for Cool Pets" and no one would even notice.

-I still don't see the single-player aspect. Played many MMOs. In SWTOR did raiding, battleground pvp, outdoor zone group quests, instanced group quests, crafting on the stations and trade network. It never felt different than most of the past MMOs I've played. The only difference, it was a little more cinematic with no quest text. What are people doing in this MMO that makes them feel it's single player? Are you grouping? Are you doing PvP? Are you raiding? Are you using the trade network? Or is it just me? lol

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Originally posted by Kyleran

Originally posted by Zabat1

I can see the points for saying it's a single player RPG, but.. After playing Funcom's Secret World, whew! Secret World is a true single player RPG. Forcing groups to split up to do single player instances, effing up cutscenes because you're grouped. At least SWTOR let you run missions and instances together.

Not quite accurate for either game. While it's true there are single player instances in TSW, (they are few and far between btw) it also lets you complete some missions by assisting other players in the kills without even formally grouping with them. It has the standard group oriented dungeons as well.

SWTOR has its own version of the single player instance, there are a number of missions (few and far between I'll grant you) where only one player of a particular class may get credit for completing the mission. True, they don't force you to break up your group, but you still have rerun it a couple of times if there are other players of the same class.

But no doubt, both titles are cut from the same cloth and feel very much like single player experiences due to the heavy use of cut scenes (where you can stand idle for quite a bit of time listening to all the NPC's stories and what not) and this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does detract from a more traditional MMORPG experience where the players are more central to creating the actual story instead of reading about it.

Does this apply to Guild Wars 2 also? The characters main storyline has a lot of cutscenes with standing and watching cinematics. For example only one player can get credit for that personal story, even though they are the same race and class. So it has to be run multiple times. Isn't that the same as SWTOR or TSW?

This "singleplayer rpg" thread is hilarious. When you actually compare MMOs to other MMOs there isn't much difference. You might as well call the whole MMO genre a "singleplayer rpg".

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To claim star wars is not multiplayer is ludicrous!!! I personally levelled 1 to 50 and into raiding doued with my wife!!!

It comes down to what you define as a solo game.. Skyrim.. that is solo.. there is NO other players to team up with NO multiplare content nada. There is no comparison... and frankly being able to level to max solo is possible but you miss all the additional content from flashpoints to heroic 4 and even some heroic 2 content gets completely left behind.

I played wow all the way from vanilla to cata and NOWHERE outside of instances and raids does IT force you to party up to complete 85 levels of levelling. You want to start bandying about the single player game tag you better back it up with non frivolous evidence!!

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I was going to post something meaningful. About hubris and hemorrhaging subs, but then I remembered. It's was just a really good single player game that had bad mechanics for multiplay and pvp tacked onto it...

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For some reason I enjoyed grouping in this game more than any other game with the exceptions of Shadowbane (grouping was a must) and city of heroes. It was easy to find small groups which were needed from time to time and the social points made it a bit more enjoyable

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Mike is just a bit upset because he's a SWTOR fan and hates to see his game slammed so much even when people are leaving the title in droves for not only this complaint, but many others as well.

TLDR: MMORPG's are about the stories player make interacting between each other (even in a good theme park, see DAOC, circa 2003) and not about the stories the Developers set before them. Those clearly belong in the single player game space.

Don't have time to respond to all your points here at the moment (maybe later), but please don't put words in my mouth here. I'm not upset because people are "slamming my game". Please. I couldn't care less what other people think of something I enjoy, whether it's music, a film, or a videogame.

I simply wanted to use this article to blow up a hyperbolic and ridiculous label that I've seen flying around for some time now and use it as a jump off point to discuss the larger issue here: people are really upset that MMOs like SWTOR don't foster the same social interaction found in MMOs of the past, which is what in large part made this genre great at all. Despite the vast differences in theme, gameplay, mechanics, or even subgenres, it's the potential for social interaction and community that makes MMOs what they are. The problem is we can't ever discuss this in a meaningful way if we're tossing around stupid labels and other hyperbole.

I get where it comes from. I'd just love to see the hyperbole fall out of style so we can discuss the real issue in a constructive and intelligent manner.

I can respect that. I can agree that the real issue is that the game promotes almost zero social aspects that were a large part of what helped retention in previouse MMO's. Hell the only reason I stayed in WoW as long as I did was friends made. But I also understand what people mean when describing SWTOR as a SRPG. Semantics aside, most people know what was meant and I find it funny that I have only really saw an MMO called this when regarding SWTOR. Maybe it will now become a criticism of future titles I dont know, but it is spot on how I felt when playing SWTOR and I have never felt that In any MMORP I have been a part of.

No, TOR is not the first to recieve all this single player rhetoric. WoW got a lot of it in its day and even to some degree now, just less with all of its raiding content. Warhammer Online on its PvE aspect is considered a single player game as are most MMOs with their questing content. The fact of the matter is that these people aren't happy unless the grouping / interaction is forced rather than voluntary.